Everything Snoskred

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The good news..

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The good news is – number one, if you clear your firefox cache, your blogger will work again. Thanks to Sephy for advising me of this and for saving the squirrels.. :) and geez that’s a gorgeous pic of that Christmas Tree! Ya’all go look.

Number two, I have an Avon catalogue, at last. I been waiting a while. I need stuff.

Number three, I got me new plants, and planted them in pots today. I promise pics tomorrow, I swear, now blogger is working again.

So I’ll be back tomorrow with a combat strategy or few for fighting the war on Depression. In the meantime, one of the things I always do when I am feeling down is put on some music.

Thanks for your lovely emails and comments, I’m just crazy bout ya’all too.. ;)

General Chit-chat

The bad news..

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I’m writing this using Internet Explorer as blogger seems to work fine with it, and the issue they are having at the moment happens only in Firefox. Apparently. Well let’s hope they get it fixed soon because using IE makes me want to mutilate squirrels. And I like squirrels a lot. So I guess it’s lucky I’m in Australia where we don’t have any.

I’m really glad to see Meva is back to blogging, she vanished for a short time. This means I am finally going to post something I’ve been thinking about posting for a while now. I’m hoping that people aren’t just going to run away and stop reading this blog if I admit this. It’s not exactly cheerful reading, and this is not a trip down memory lane that I am looking forward to, but I think it has to be done.

Some years ago, I was very depressed. So much so that I could not get out of bed, most of the time. It all started when my car got broken into. I had worked for a company that sold car sound, and I had installed $7,000 worth of car audio into my car – myself.

It had a great alarm, and the people who broke into it laid under the car for over an hour with a rag stuffed into the siren while the backup battery ran down. I was furious. I wanted to kill the people who did it, but I didn’t know who they were. I was so angry, I can’t even describe it.

They were helped by the fact that my husband (yes I was married) had chosen for us to live in a house with a driveway from hell that I could not drive my car up or down, it had brick walls on both side, and it was at approximately a 45 degree angle.

Some months before he had decided to buy it – without consulting me. He told me we were buying it. I wanted to look at other houses, he refused to consider it. The house belonged to his Dad, and his Dad wanted to get rid of it. I suppose that was when I realised that I’d made a huge mistake, and this marriage thing was not the best of ideas.

So then one night soon after the car break in I went to fill up the ice cube tray, and the tap fell off the wall into my hand. Water was gushing out of the wall, I was absolutely saturated. Husband ran in and was screaming at me to go and turn off the water, I had no idea how to do that, so I said he would have to do it. He goes out, turns it off, returns, and by this time I am laughing – well, you have to, right? :)

I was completely soaking wet, and he was furious – that I was laughing, that the tap fell off the wall, and he starts yelling at me. I said “I’m not the one who decided to buy this house” and out of nowhere he just slapped me. I grabbed my car keys and left, not even stopping to get shoes. I did not go back.

That was my first run in with the black hole of depression, it certainly was not my last. There was a time in the early 2000’s when I spent over a year in there.. Everyone who has been there has a different way of describing it. To me it was like a big black hole I’d fallen into and I had no idea how to get out.

I might sometimes seem like I’m functioning well and everything is fine, but I know I am always close to the edge of that dark hole, and if I don’t work hard to keep myself out of it, I can end up back there. Seeing as it’s so hard to get out, I’ve worked out strategies over time which help me keep out of there. I’m going to share some of those with you guys over the next few weeks because I recognise they may be helpful to other people, too.

Normal people who have never been depressed will not understand the effort required to do just simple every day tasks when you’re down. Just to get up out of bed and have a shower seems like something impossible. The effort involved, to me it always seemed like someone had tied weights to my arms and legs, and it was difficult to move them. Probably most people who have been down will understand that.

So don’t think this post is looking for sympathy or anything like that, I’m not. Right now I feel like I’m flying. Things are going pretty well, except for the fact I have no job and no desire to get one, but it’s ok, we’re coping, I don’t really need to get one until I feel like it.

I just want people to know that I’ve been there, too.

I think most people end up there sometime. It’s ok to admit it, and it’s ok to ask for help – and get help. There’s plenty of it out there, if you look in the right places. :)

About Snoskred, depression, domestic violence

Exhausted

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Had a terrible sleep, due to nightmares of trucks rolling down cliffs. I believe I managed 4 hours in total. Then a long day of driving, in terrible weather, rain, low visibility.. and NO decent music because our little mp3 in the cigarette lighter thing would not work in the truck.. I’m so spoilt having that thing, and so used to it that 8 hours listening to the radio makes me want to dead people.

Not many photos were taken, not many stops were made, weather too bad. I now go to bed and sleep at least 12 hours. Be good ya’all, I’ll be back with the few pictures I did manage when I get up.. ;)

If you’re looking for something to read, have a look here – I posted it yesterday. And something is wrong with blogger, I could not make the link link. :( If that makes sense. GRRR

General Chit-chat, scambaiting

NaBloPoMo is over..

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But the commenting challenge is not. I’m going to continue to comment on at least 20 blogs per day until I finish the list. I’m up to S now. This could take me months but I do not care, it is worth it. I have found some amazing new blogs and enjoyed almost every minute of reading.

Jihanna’s post here reminded me.. I have taken the commenting to a new level this week.

I sent an email off to a website that had pop-up advertising, letting them know it was highly annoying and I would not be returning to their site anymore. This is something I would not have done before the commenting challenge, but now because I’m not afraid to speak up, I did it! And they got back to me –

Thank you for reporting the problem.

Spyware and popups are absolutely not allowed on the site. I will investigate where it came from and shut it down if possible. Ads are served by various third-parties, as we do not handle most of the advertising in-house.

Do you remember and more details of what it looked like or are you able to reproduce a screenshot of a page with the ad in question?

And yes, I had taken a screenshot, so I got back to them and let them know. And I went and installed adblock for firefox, too, and the other half bumped my user setting down so nothing can be installed while I am on the computer (this is a wise move when you’re a scambaiter and visiting sites which might be slightly dodgy from time to time).

Then, I love this salad dressing and I ran out. I wanted to buy more but I was having a lot of trouble finding it. So instead of just keep going to every store, I thought, why not find an email address for them and ask them where I can go to buy it? And I did, I sent them a nice little email. I got an email back telling me they no longer make it (BOO!) but inviting me to be a part of their customer club. I know the other half is going to be annoyed that I said yes, but I said yes. And I’ll stop crying about the salad dressing not being available anymore sometime, probably in 2007. ;)

It’s ok though, he thinks I’m crying because he won’t let me buy more sparkly shoes and handbags, or a gold glitter lamp.

Angry Snoskred, customer feedback, NaBloPoMo

I can’t decide..

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… whether I’m annoyed or not. The internet was down, so I SMS’d the other half asking him to call me. By the time he rang, I’d already fixed it (Yes, I am a GENIUS!) but that was not why he was calling me..

OH – Would you like to go for a drive about 290kms south tomorrow?

Me – I thought we were going to Wollongong with my parents. (Wollongong is north)

OH – Well, I have to deliver about $15,000 worth of stuff to a customer. I can either pay $600 to get the truck driver to do it, or we hire a truck for $390 and do it ourselves, or we have a very unhappy customer.

Grrr. GRRRRR. I would not mind if we could go in our own car, but obviously the stuff won’t fit in there. However, we do get to go past a number of incredibly gorgeous places, so I’ll take the camera and try to make the most of it. But it is really REALLY annoying, because it will take ages to do this in the truck.

One of the places we will pass through is Narooma, it’s just the most beautiful place. I can’t describe the peace of it to you. Photos won’t even do it justice, and the only pics I have are from the one time we drove through there just about as the sun was setting. Even though it was getting dark, when I got close to the water I could tell it was the most incredible shade of green. There’s this inlet, and the water is going past at a decent speed, so you can just sit there on this little jetty and watch the water go by. So I’ll see if I can get some good pics for you tomorrow.

narooma

Edit to add – no, now I am annoyed. The other half forgot he’d already arranged to have our airconditioner installed tomorrow. He’d done a deal with the guy because he was going to be at home so he would work as the laborer and it would cost us less. And now, not. :(

Another update – now he has arranged the airconditioner man to install on Sunday instead. This means no trip to Wollongong this weekend. It’s not meant to be, clearly. But I can have me another watermelon candle from Batemans Bay..

Angry Snoskred, New South Wales, photography

Another non-religious post..

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Over at Life Is A Highway, today’s post is about chickens upsetting people. I left a comment there and this post really got me thinking, I wrote this post about a similar topic a while back. The comment I left was –

I don’t eat there either, and I won’t be anytime soon. I don’t like their food much.

If halal preparation means less nastiness for chickens then it is good, but on a serious note I do not like all this changing stuff because of religion. It’s wrong, in my opinion. When other people’s beliefs begin to intrude on every day life, that’s a bit of an issue. And no wonder the Christians and Atheists and everyone else are annoyed – they have never managed to intrude on every day life in this way, and they are jealous, I think.

I’m ok with the chicken stuff, because this seems like it is a much nicer way of killing the animals according to the RSPCA and I support that. The problem is elsewhere. The problem is the Bacon and Pork.

Let us take a journey into an entirely hypothetical world for a moment.

Lets say for example, that David Koresh had not died, that there was no shootout, that he was arrested by the FBI and then released when all his housemates refused to testify and like the weapons of mass destruction nobody could find any guns. And lets say then he is popular and not ugly and also somewhat stick thin and because of the media attention, people start joining his religion in mass numbers, all over the world.

Let’s say David sat down one evening to have a lovely meal, and ended up with severe food poisoning. So bad in fact, that he ended up in hospital in intensive care. So when he’s feeling better, he makes a sermon, and adds a new rule to his religion – NO FISH. And you can’t eat food from a restaurant that serves fish at all. And you can’t have anything to do with fish whatsoever, because the Devil tries to poison people with Fish.

So as a result, fisherman suddenly find it hard to sell their fish to restaurants. Mcdonalds says goodbye to the Filet of Fish. Fish and chip shops all over the country shut down (sorry Pauline). Fish markets close. An industry vanishes. People are out of work. This could soon happen with Pork, people. I’m not joking around here. If restaurants all choose to become Halal, it might be goodbye to our pig farming industry. This might be a good thing in some people’s opinions.

And the food poisoning scenario described above is actually not that far off what happened with this whole bit being put in the bible in the first place –

Lev 11:7 And THE PIG, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew the cud, is unclean to you.
Lev 11:8 You shall not eat any of their flesh, and you shall not touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you.
ev 11:46 This is THE LAW about beast and bird and every living creature that moves through the waters and every creature that swarms on the ground,
Lev 11:47 to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean and between the living creature that may be eaten and the living creature THAT MAY NOT BE EATEN.

So you can’t eat it, and you can’t touch their carcasses – because you could get ill back in those days from doing so. My good friend Anna who I was chatting to about this explained that the bible was written mainly for people who lived in the desert, and in the desert food spoils fast, and you can get really bad diseases when that happens including triconosis which you get from under-cooked Pork.

This Wiki is really interesting and gives many reasons why the ban on pork may have been implemented.

What scares me most about religion is people choosing to live their lives based on outdated rules and information. That’s why I’m not religious. I choose not to follow the bible, the Qur’?n or any other such book. If the Halal way of killing animals is better for everyone, that’s fine and I am willing to accept it. No problems there.

However, the first time I’m told I can’t have bacon on my burger, I’m walking out – and I intend on being extremely vocal about it, too. This is Australia. If I want bacon on my burger, I should be able to get it, and NO religion should be telling me otherwise.

I’m not pretending like I’m educated on all these issues – ignorance is a part of this. I didn’t know anything about why Pork was supposedly so bad, or what Halal really meant, or how it was better for the chickens and stuff. I’ve done a bit of reading on these topics recently, so I know a little more about it now. I’m willing and prepared to accept a better way of doing things, but I also want people to respect *my* culture and beliefs, which include having bacon on a burger. I don’t want to be all “Muslims are bad” and stuff, because I don’t believe that at all.

But I will be honest with you all – it is very threatening to me when things change. I don’t like it. Most humans don’t. I’m willing to look at why I am feeling threatened and try to understand the issues and get educated on them, but a lot of people are not. A lot of people see all this stuff going on, like the Mufti saying those things about uncovered meat and women, and bacon being taken off the menu, and all these veils all over the place, and then with the whole terrorism connection and Jihad and all this scary stuff, people are freaking out.

I probably haven’t made a lot of sense on this issue. I’m finding it hard to find the words really. I am not even sure this says what I want to say.. :) But I’m out of time for now, I may revisit it later.

Angry Snoskred, Muslim, religion

Grrr

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Nobody clicked the music clips in my review below. So now you’re all officially IN MY BAD BOOKS, and bugger it if I’m ever like putting effort into stuff for you again! You can all sit there without music, all depressed and stuff. Because music is what keeps people happy, people!

And I’m sitting here having locked the cats away (they’re indoor cats) in the little room down the end of the house waiting for a truck to deliver me a split system air conditioner and a new fridge. Yes, the old fridge literally deaded itself yesterday It was making a terrible noise then it stopped working, Just when I thought I would have to carry all my cold stuff down the street to my parents place, it seemed to get working again. It’s been making loud explosion like sounds for a while.

The poor kitties! I can hear their small mews and the little one is desperately trying to get out, she’s got a paw under the door and is jiggling it, that works with most rooms except that one, which is why they are in there. But still, no truck! I should have waited till the truck got here but they can be hard to catch when that happens. It’s been over 20 minutes already. The driver was supposed to be coming straight here. I feel terrible and I just want to let them out. If he’s much longer I’ll have to but there’s no way I’ll ever get them locked in again today. JUST GET HERE ALREADY! Deliver my stuff and go away so I can let my kitties run free! grrrr

The other half asked me what I would like to do with the dead fridge. I’d like to send it back to Fisher & Crappel oops Paykel, if you don’t mind. I’d like them to stick it where the sun does not shine. Though I realise this may take time and much lubrication.. it’s quite a large fridge, but it would make me feel better. 8 years out of a fridge is nowhere near long enough. I would never have bought it, it was given to us by my parents when we moved here to use until we bought our own new fridge. They’d replaced it with *another* Fisher and Crappel! Yes, another sign I was adopted right there. ;)

If you got here searching for Fisher & Paykel and you’re thinking about buying something of theirs? STOP NOW. Especially the washing machines, those are such evil crap in my opinion, I believe they are designed to break. Every time I sold one I’d say to myself “I’m so going to hell”. I tried to talk those people out of that mistake, but it was their choice. I’d tell them all the reasons it was bad, and they’d still want one and hand over substantial amounts of cash. I’m SORRY, I tried to tell you!

Still no truck. Another 10 minutes has gone by since I wrote the above. The kitties are trying the silence tactic now. This involves making no noise at all, hoping I will open the door to check on them. If I did that, they would be sitting right next to the door, and they would be out of there like a gunshot, running for their nearest “haha you can’t get me out of here” places. That would be fine if the nitwit who designed this house had put doors in crucial places. But they haven’t, it’s “open plan” and you can walk from the front door to the back of the house, no doors. Even that wouldn’t be so bad, if the doors that are here actually worked. I can name two doors the kitties can’t open. The rest are as useless as this truck driver who STILL IS NOT HERE.

There’s no milk. I can’t make coffee. I could walk down the street and get milk, but I am stuck here waiting for the VERY LATE truck driver. Hello? I live 3 minutes drive from the shop. What the fuck is taking so long to get here? I NEED COFFEE NOW. It’s bad enough my kitties are locked away, but no coffee on top of that, and nobody clicking on my well made mp3 Rockstar Supernova link which showcases the brilliance of my latest CD purchase, and it’s enough to make one start throwing things.

I’m in SUCH a bad mood now. Back slowly away, people. But you can click on my link first.. WHERE is this truck? It’s been another 10 minutes. The kitties tried opening the door again and have gone back to the silence tactic now. It’s starting to work. What if something happened in there? Maybe they’ve just given up and are curled up into little balls of fluff sleeping cutely. But you can bet the minute I open that door and let them out, the truck will arrive, and I’ll have to lock them up again so they can’t get outside. But if I don’t open it, the truck will never get here.

It’s been an hour now. I have to let them out. You watch this truck turn up..

Well it’s a good thing I let them out, another half hour has gone by, no truck. And no coffee. I really *really* need coffee now. And it was starting to get a little warm in that room they were in with the door shut, I’ve been sitting on the floor while the coolness from the airconditioned other rooms was pouring in. I have no idea how I am going to manage to get the cats back into one of the two rooms they can’t open the door of, and this is just making me more angry at the truck driver vanishing somewhere between here and the shop.

Phew, almost two hours since the other half called me to say the truck was on the way, they got here. With icecream. So that’s where they disappeared to! They didn’t bring any for me :( and if I’d known they were at the shops I would have said get milk! ;)

The cats are back out now, I locked them in the other room with a door that works. They promptly hid under the bed. Now I have two fridges in the middle of my kitchen, a cat tower in the middle of the walkway because they needed to move it to get the fridge in, and two cats sniffing around checking it all out. Oh, and ants. I don’t know why or how ;( I’m gonna have to spray surface spray today.

I’m going to get milk, make me coffee, and then I might try to write a somewhat more intelligent post to put here on this blog. :)

Angry Snoskred, electrical appliances, kitties